Q&A: Moses' Prophecy
Moses' Prophecy
Question
Regarding Moses, it is said that he saw an Egyptian man beating a Hebrew man. Moses struck the Egyptian and hid him in the sand. Rashi brings the midrash on “and he turned this way and that” — that he saw that no one destined to convert would come from him.
I’m asking: what is the plain meaning of this? If he saw the future, then he saw that he was going to kill him, and then of course he would have no descendants…
Answer
You’re pushing through an open door. I’ve already written here several times that Moses saw a hypothetical future, meaning the present, not the future. He saw that if he left him alive, no one destined to convert would come from him. This is a deep insight into the present.
Discussion on Answer
That’s what I said. It’s the same thing. To see a future that won’t actually happen is really to look at the present (from the picture of his current inner state, what ought to emerge if the circumstances were such-and-such).
Okay, fine. Isn’t that kind of obvious? How do others explain it?
“And he saw an Egyptian man striking a Hebrew man, one of his brothers”…. “and he saw that there was no man” — at the very least the beaten Hebrew man was there, and it’s likely there were several other Hebrews there too watching what was happening, so how suddenly is there “no man”? Maybe because of this difficulty Rashi explains: “that no man destined to convert would come from him.”
As for “seeing the future” and other magic and divination: the notion that someone sees or can see the future is a childish, foolish, stupid notion, and contrary to reason and to the Torah. The Torah repeatedly makes clear that even God does not know the future, all the more so human beings. What does not exist cannot be known. And whoever believes in sorcerers denies the Torah of Moses.
It should read: he has no share in the Torah of Yos (as transmitted to us by our rabbis, the transmitters of the tradition…)
Was the Rabbi’s last answer directed at me? I didn’t understand what he meant.
Yes. It should read: he has no share in the Torah of Peshita. What I meant was to point out that you are assuming certain things based on your own reasoning (some of which I agree with) and turning them into principles of faith, and on that basis deciding who believes in the Torah of Moses and who does not. So I remarked that this is the Torah of Peshita, not the Torah of Moses.
I’d appreciate a link. Why can’t we say that he saw in prophecy what would happen if he did not kill the Egyptian? Why do we need to get to the present?